thelinuxlink.net

On the recovery show a few shows back, Dan talked about helping his daughter through an Arch install.
What are the best things about Arch, and also the drawbacks?

I've only been using Arch for 2 weeks, and it seems stable. It took a little more to configure, but after a week, my root file system was still < 2gb. It's nice to see a distro that starts small, and you build up what you want.

The simplicity of Arch is very refreshing. Like Slackware, it relies largely on you configuring what you want by actually modifying the config files with a text editor. The rc.conf file is pretty darn straight forward and perfect. For other services is pretty much requires you to know what you are doing to configure said service. The advantage of that is it requires you to understand the software a bit more so when it comes time to troubleshoot you are not left holding your head wondering exactly where the problem is and how to solve it. You have a better grasp of what to do and what to report.

The speed of Arch is beautiful. My arch systems fly, that they do. Furthermore, pacman is awesome. Want a package, install it, it's there in seconds.

The Arch repository is pretty darn large. Add on aur and bam, tons of stuff available. Still cannot find what you want? Build the package yourself from the source. A few minutes to learn the process and you are in. It is so easy.

I truly believe at it's core Arch is very simple. It's simple in the way that it is straight forward. Stuff is not hidden behind gui tools that attempt to automate processes for you. You have to do it yoursef, so it removes the complexity on the back-end for simplicity on the front-end making it so much easier to dig into the innards and solve problems yourself.

Like Slackware the more effort you put into learning the software you are using the more you are going to get out of your system and be able to apply it to other distros.

The Arch community is second to none. Great forums, great documentation, and great support.

FInally, Arch prides it self on bleeding edge. That has both it's good points and bad points, but I like that for a desktop. For a server, I prefer slackware or debian for stability in that realm.

I found that simplicity was a strength. I had to find out how to add a window manager (Xfce) and do a little configuration, but with the help of vim, it worked out.

I couldn't have said everything better myself. With all the documentation available, and a little terminal work, everything works fast.

<kidding> Maybe some of the other guys there will step up and get the Arch bug. (just saying, real men use Arch) </kidding>